This Should Be Republicans’ Red Line in Any Immigration Deal

C onservatives are rightly concerned that the reported immigration deal in Congress won’t adequately secure the border. They’re likely to be unhappy with whatever Senate Republicans produce, but that’s always the case with bipartisan compromises. Republicans of all stripes should be ready to swallow things they would not ideally want, but there is one provision they should not accept under any circumstances: work permits for illegal immigrants awaiting asylum hearings.

Controlling the border means more than simply enforcing entry. No matter how tightly the border is controlled, there is still the problem of the many illegal migrants already here. They need to support themselves, and work is the easiest way to do that. That is presumably why negotiators are reportedly looking at speeding up the process to award work permits for people already in the country.

This should be utterly unacceptable for Republicans. Migrants are flocking to the United States to find jobs. If they know they can get them once they get inside the country, they will continue to come. That in turn puts constant pressure on the Border Patrol to catch them and keep them out. Cutting the incentives for illegal migration is the prerequisite to successfully stemming it.

This is more important than getting funding to finish construction of the border wall. Even if Democrats agree to provide this funding, they would be in charge of constructing it. It defies logic to think they will risk the ire of their base and agree to rapidly put up a working barrier. That means the border will remain potentially porous in the immediate future, making it doubly dangerous to speed up the granting of work permits.

Allowing migrants already here to work strengthens the inevitable argument to provide them amnesty regardless of whether their asylum claims have merit. Progressive activists often contend that it is inhumane to uproot individuals or families who have embedded themselves in a community. Grant work permits to the people already here and they will do just that. Given the snail’s pace at which the immigration-court system is hearing these cases, we can expect progressives to argue in a few years that these additional millions of people also deserve permanent residence, if not citizenship.

Refusing to allow these migrants to work legally puts the burden on governments to care for them. That’s not popular, which is probably why state and local governments want the work permits. Having to foot the bill for migrants forces governments to make a choice: Do they pay for housing and caring for illegal migrants, or do they pay for the services their citizen voters want? That’s a choice they should have to make, and the likely outcome is that many migrants will have to return on their own to their homeland.

Migrant work permits also put downward pressure on wages, which hurts all American workers. Families are still reeling from the effects of inflation and need rising wages to make up for their lost purchasing power. Importing millions of migrants through manipulation of the asylum laws may be good for employers looking for cheap labor. It’s terrible for average Americans trying to earn a living.

Some Senate Republicans say that the House should accept any deal they make, arguing that, should Trump become the GOP nominee and win the election, they won’t get a better one with him in the White House (because the Senate Democrats will filibuster anything he proposes). That may be true, but any deal that allows illegal migrants to work will infuriate the GOP base. If Trump is president, his control of the bureaucracy could reduce, if not halt, the flows into the country. A second Trump administration could also step up deportations and tighten enforcement of the rules that govern hiring. In the long run, no deal now plus Trump later is likelier to be better than a bad deal now.

Republicans need to understand that the days of coddling employers while soft-rolling conservatives is over. One can be compassionate to people already here and still place illegal migration on the path to ultimate termination. Giving work permits to people who are here only because of the Biden administration’s flagrant disregard for our immigration laws would be insulting to Americans.

Republicans need to decide whose side they are on when it comes to illegal immigration. Any deal that includes work permits for the people Biden let into the country shows they aren’t on the side of conservatives — or American workers.